EGYPT: Plague of Locusts

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Locusts are good to eat. St. Matthew says of John the Baptist: "His meat was locusts and wild honey." Shakespeare in Othello refers ecstatically to food "as luscious as locusts." Last week in the French and Spanish colonies in Africa, where the locust swarms were a nuisance but not a plague, hungry natives ate their fill, played games with the hoppers, bet on their hops. Tourists from the U. S. on Mediterranean cruises took a different view, grew vexed and grumpy as the hoppers hopped into their berths, baths, soups. In Greece and Rumania the sudden arrival of the locusts was said to have caused "panics" in the smaller villages. At Athens and Bucharest the respective ministers of agriculture organized bands of exterminators.

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